Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Jowi Taylor: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1898

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

In this 1898th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Jowi Taylor, the originator of the Six String Nation guitar, about that project, his CBC Radio show Global Village, The Wire: The Impact of Electricity on Music, and the many FOTMs with whom he's interacted. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Nick Ainis, and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail].

Hi, I'm Joey Taylor. I'm a former broadcaster, writer, author, presenter, and creator of the Sixth String Nation project, author of the Sixth String Nation book about said project, and delighted to be making my Toronto Mike debut. Welcome to episode 1,8, 1898 of Toronto Mike. an award-winning podcast, proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. Order online at Great Lakesbeer.com for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta, enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Visit palma Pasta.com for more.

Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball. Catch a game at Christy Pits this summer. No ticket required. Fusion Corp's own Nick Aedis. He's the host of Building Toronto Skyline. And Mike and Nick, two podcasts that you ought to listen to. Recycle MyElectronics.C.A. Committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past.

And Redley Funeral Home. Pillars of the community since 1921. Joining me today, making his Toronto Mike debut, it's Voyager curator, Joey Taylor. Nice to meet you, Joey. Nice to meet you, too, Mike. And let's not bury the lead here. Joey is spelled J-O-W-I.

Explain yourself. I was born in Uganda, and so my dad's from Northern Ontario. My mom's from England. Okay. I got married. No, I got married. I was born.

You were married, very young, young boy. Yeah, I started. Okay, that's not cool. My parents got married there. Right. And the only guest at their wedding was a guy named Odero Joey, who was a friend of theirs. He was a Luo speaker from Kenya working in Uganda, and I was named after him. It's a name that means buffalo in the Lua language.

Okay, so Joey was this gentleman's surname? Yeah, well, kind of the way it was. Okay. It's odd the way it works there, but yeah, yeah, kind of. Okay, that's a cool origin story. Like I was thinking, I don't know, it was a misspelling on the birth certificate. I wasn't sure where that story would go, but that's pretty cool. Actually, you know, there's kind of a neat story about this, which is that, well, we can get into all of this later.

But I was, everybody assumed that I would be part of the Vancouver Olympics in 2010 with this project. And I was trying to talk to people. wasn't working out. Nobody was responding to me. And then I get this email out of the blue from this guy says, we would like to have you as part of the Vancouver Olympics, Olympic Village. Surely you're already invited. Someone's talking to you, right?

And I was like, no. And he said, Willis, are you any chance you're going to be in Vancouver? And it just so happened. My book had just come out. And I was on a little tour. And I go in for this meeting at the Van Osser. office and there's three people there's there's the guy who invited me Jordan there's this guy

and there's this woman there as well whose name I can't remember we have this meeting uh she says at one point in the meeting I'm sorry I have to apologize to you and I said why's that she said because I thought this project was like a guitar cardboard cut out that people stuck their faces through to get their picture taken and I was like that's fascinating how the broken telephone works. Right. Why would you think that? And then the guy, Andy, said to me,

can I talk to you about your name? Yeah. And I said, yeah. And he said, you know, where's it come from? What does it mean? I told him, he said, you know, that's kind of amazing because I worked with a lot of indigenous communities across this country. And do you know why the buffalo is so revered?

and I said, not really. And he said, because it's the only animal that puts its head down and walks through a storm rather than running away from it. Because they know that they go through it, they'll get to pasture quicker. And that's what you've done with this project. So now I want to make sure we know off the top. Again, we'll get into this.

But what exactly is this project? It's 64 pieces, five musicians, one Canadian story. Sixth String Nation, because I introduced you in that intro as Voyager Curator. Is that accurate? Like, what is Voyager? Like, tell us exactly what we're talking about. And then we'll get to know each other a bit and then we'll dive in. All right.

Well, the five artistings, that's just a show that's coming up on. Oh, sorry. Yeah, so I'm reading the, yes, okay. So May 29, so we're recording on May 11th. I'll drop this right away. But May 29th at 8 p.m. Small World Music Center, 180 Shaw Street. That's the show with the 64.

pieces, five musicians, one Canadian story? Well, that's the show with the five musicians. Right. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the guitar itself. So, okay. So, okay. So there's a guitar. Like, it's not a cardboard cut out when you stick your face in actual, playable instrument. Okay. A very good one, too. Um, so this is an idea that I had in 1995. Okay. So, so you might remember in October of that year, there was going to be a referendum in Quebec, I do. I do. And, you know, I, I kind of got it. I kind of understood the Quebec impulse, because

there's a part of the country that really understands the connection between culture and nationhood and so on. Not anymore than Newfoundland, I would argue, but nonetheless, I kind of got it. But the way the whole issue was framed was very much red versus blue, Quebec versus Ottawa, French versus English. And it's like, well, wait a minute. What about the indigenous people of Quebec who have a relationship with the crown? That's where their treaties are. What about people who came from Haiti or Algeria, new Canadians who settled in Montreal as Canadians.

Like, where is their voice in this? So I happened to meet this guitar maker, George Rizani, who was trying to build a guitar just using wood from his property, which inspired me, and he was in Ontario at the time. And I said,

wow, do you think you could build a guitar using pieces from every province and territory? And then we'd have this kind of national guitar that would speak to the gap in the conversation that were happening leading up to the referendum. And he said, yeah, that sounds like a cool project. I'd love to do it. And then I spent the next 11 years trying to get it organized, trying to get it funded,

trying to do the research, all that kind of stuff. So it was not ready in time for that referendum. It took till 2006 for it to come off the bench and debut on Parliament Hill for Canada Day 2006. And since then, I've been taking the guitar around the country and abroad as well, sharing the story of the guitar and thereby the story of Canada from multiple perspectives because every piece of this guitar tells a different story. Each one is drawn from different cultures, communities, characters, events from every province and territory of Canada.

So it means that you kind of have this lens by which to look at history, culture, belonging, identity, all those things. and then on top of the story that I tell about it, which is why I'm the creator and curator, if you want to call it curator, sure. The guitar itself then has this other voice that comes out when people play it. Right. Okay.

So you did write a book and there's great photos in this book. So you've got a copy there. I'm going to give myself again. Because we're going to do a book exchange. I'm going to do that and it's signed for you there. Oh, wow. Okay. There you go.

Okay, so it's called Sixth String Nation by Joey Taylor. Like I said, 64 pieces, six strings, one Canada, one guitar. And I already saw some of the photos. And now I see, okay, these are great photos. Because we're going to do a little game off the top where you're going to name check FOTM's Friends of Toronto Mic. Who you've got some connection to maybe they've actually played the guitar. Who knows?

You're going to tell us. But I want to make sure people know that, I now have a copy of the book, and I have a book for you real quick, Joey. The history of the Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball team. Fantastic. Great history there. I was there yesterday at Christy Pets. Oh, were you?

And it was blast. Like, it was just a great time. There's a very controversial new member of the team. His name is Yassiel Pueg, Cuban guy, but he's got a conviction for obstruction of justice, and there's a whole bunch of other, you know, allegations against him. that make this a rather controversial signing. But this guy, I watched him, he batted four times. He walked, then he hit a home run,

and then he crushed a ball that I don't think has landed yet. So his second home run, and then he walked again. So, you know, no ticket required at Christy Pitts. I'm telling you what an experience it was seeing this guy hit balls at a Toronto Public Park. So this is the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team. No ticket required. Catch a game at Christy Pitts this summer.

Just so you know, there is some important baseball history in the project as well. Tell me. We have part of a jersey from the Vancouver, Asahi, Japanese-Canadian baseball team founded in 1914. Okay. And when we debuted, so this is a piece of material and it's been mounted on the strap of the guitar.

And when we sort of announced that we'd finally, you know, obtained this piece, we did a big thing down at the Rogers Center for Canada Baseball Day, where they celebrate Canadian baseball history. And one of the people, you know, Ace came out and hammed it up with the guitar. Munonori Kawasaki came out for the crowd. He knew all about the Vancouver Asahi. Amazing.

But Ruth Tosetti was there, who was the granddaughter of Babe Ruth. And of course, Babe Ruth hit his first home runs in Toronto on Hanlon's Point at Maple Leaf Stadium. 100% with the Providence Grays and legend has it the ball landed in the lake and there's a I don't know if this is accurate or not but it's often been told that they never found that ball.

Really? Now imagine if I got that in the guitar. Get your scuba gear brother, we're going for a dive. By the way, as I listen to myself in the headphones, I will let the listener show. I hear that my voice is strained and I think that might be because

I was at the lowest of the low concert on Saturday at the Danforth Music Hall. And you just sort of, they did the entire album, Shakespeare My But, in its entirety, in order, which is quite an experience. Because it's like a time machine back to 1991, right? So here. And my favorite, shockingly, that's my favorite lowest of the low album. And I just biked over and yelled for, you know, 90 minutes to two hours. And then I don't know, as I started.

Time will spend. You know what? No regrets. Shout out to Tom Cochran, who will talk. I'll talk about it in a moment. But no regrets. But then the very next day I was at Christy Pits and just chatting up a lot of good people.

I met. Mike Wilner was there. Snow was there. Shout out to the band. He's not an informer. We got to get snow, get this guitar in Snow's hands. There you go.

That'd be good. I could help you with that one. He's coming over soon. Who else was there? It was good to see Cam and M.F. And, a bunch of people. A ghost runner on 3rd and Yoni.

And just a bunch of good people. Liz McGuire. believe it or not, who has recovered from the ball hitting her face at Rogers Center. Good to finally meet her. Yeah, that happened. Okay. So that was my weekend.

Great time. But my voice is a little strange, but I'm jazzed for this chat here. But do you mind, Joey, if off the top, I just drop names on you of FOTMs. I mean, people who have been on this podcast. And in a sentence or so, tell me how you're connected to the person I name.

All right. Is it a fun game? Yes, it's super fun. All right. So here's the guy who actually texted me and said, you need Joey Taylor on your program. Okay. Blair Packum.

Blair Packum, what a lovely guy. And we actually grew up in the same neighborhood in Don Mills, pretty close to each other. But didn't meet until much, much later. And he's played the guitar on multiple occasions. I think I sent you a portrait that I have with Blair. Yeah, you show me your bunch of great picks. And so he has also.

Uh, you know, he's been involved in the song studio program. Uh, and so he has played the guitar multiple times at Hughes Room and elsewhere. Uh, and, uh, yeah, love a guy. And he said, Mike, you got to talk to Joey Taylor. So props to Blair. Props to Blair. Always propped. What a connector.

Okay. And another guy who came over because Blair, I think Blair literally drove him here, but, uh, Andy Stochansky. Andy and I, uh, met when we were both, uh, DJs. that's CKLN back in the day. Okay. And, uh,

we're going to have to do a whole radio segment. Oh, yeah. Because I got to hear about that. But what, what, what, what,

what era are we talking about? This is the, this is the, this is the, this is the, the, you know, the prime time.

This is the golden age of CKLN back in, back in those days and with Kurt, shout out to, Swinghammers designs on the, on the, on the sweatshirts and all that. Right. And,

uh, yeah, so we both had shows and we were friends and, oh, man, I, I've got a lot of Andy Stachansky stories. He is also one of the very first people.

Like I was on the Chopper McKinnon show in Ottawa. And he said, I've talked about Colin James and Stephen Faring and Colin Linden all claimed to be the first person to play this guitar, which one is right? And it's like, well, they're all right in certain ways. That's impossible. And so is Andy Stachansky in that number.

And so is Joel Fafard. And basically it's whether or not it was the first time in public. And really the first two people to play it were Roger House and Dave McIsaac who played it when it came off the day it came off the bench in Nova Scotia. And Andy played it the night. We all arrived in Ottawa for the day Canada Day debut, 2006. Right. And Andy and his wife Lisa had come up because they're close friends and they were with us at the hotel.

And he played the guitar in the hotel bar. The next day, I think there was rehearsals with Colin James and others. And then the next day or two days later, it was the day of the event. event, but they had a sponsor event at some big hotel and Joel Fafarred from, uh, from Saskatchewan. He played it first. Okay. Then we did a thing, a workshop in the afternoon, uh, at Majors Hill Park.

And blacking the roadie kings, rodeo kings were on stage. And who was I going to hand it to first? Well, can I guess? Tom Wilson. Nope. Stephen Fearing. Nope. Colin Linden.

Yes. Who's, because of the three, he's the only one who hasn't done this show yet. Colin. Yeah. Well, you know, he's a big deal, right?

And he's a big deal down there. And, um, uh, we went to Ranchdale public school together. He was three years older than me, but it means I saw his first show when he was in grade six and I was in grade three.

Wow. And, uh, so, you know, we, we would see each other in airports and stuff like that for years. But so when it came to who do I hand the guitar to first at this event,

it's going to be Colin because I've known him the longest. Right. Stephen Fering. was officially the first person to play it because I had dreamed for 11 years that his song, the longest road, would be the first song sung on it

and it was in front of 80,000 people. Wow. Okay, so there you go. So some more FOTM's name dropped there. But let me ask you about a woman. She's been over twice, and most recently she actually interviewed me, but Annette Manguard.

Yeah. Annette is on the cover of my book. There she is. Right up at the top, upside down. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I sent you other pictures too.

And while we've been friends for a long, long time. And, you know, in fact, I was on the board of the film festival that she started, the Images Festival after she had stepped back from it. She and Mark Glassman started that together. But yeah, we're regular walking partners and stuff like that. Beautiful. Here's a name, new FOTM, only a couple of weeks ago, but his Toronto mic debut blew me away.

I loved it so much. Paris Black. Paris Black. Okay, here's the weird connection to Paris Black. I'm ready. During the pandemic, I was swimming at a net public pool. Yeah, yeah, I know it. Community Center.

Sure. And he was there too. And we were often there at the same time. So we were in adjacent lanes. And then we would like talk in the change room afterwards. super, super interesting guy. And what a crazy career. And so we talked about getting the guitar in his hands at some point, too.

But then, of course, then everything changed and the pandemic ended. And, you know, things went back to normal. Right. So, sort of. Here's a fun fact for three years. Actually, JKSK in grade one, I attended St. Cecilia School. Oh, no kidding. Right beside your pool there.

There you go. Wow, what a small world. Okay. Yeah, I live down the street from me. Yeah, I know that very well. Okay. Lori Brown. Well, Lori was deeply involved in the project.

She, I can't remember how I first approached her, but I was working at CBC. And, of course, she was, you know, a legend there already. And she just fell in love with the project. And she became part of our kind of executive team sort of pushing the project through. there were so many hurdles finance-wise and organizationally and stuff. And we were very close for a long, long time. She's moved away now.

So I see her less. Less we forget, she was the woman in the Corey Hart video for sunglasses at night. Right. That's right. People always start with much music. I'm like, no, we got to start with Corey Hart.

Kind of like the Courtney Cox to Bruce Springsteen, right? Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And then, of course, Michelle McAdory from Crash Vegas. I drop off in the fun fact. She's the cute gal in the Try video by Blue Rodeo. No kidding. Yeah, she was dating. Yeah, she was dating a great keeler.

See, my connection there is through Jocelyn Lanwa, who was a pal. From the famous Landwa, Hamilton family. And yeah, she's a member of Crash Vegas as well. And then you got Colin Cripps and we can keep going here. Okay, but next name for you is, oh, man, I loved my chat with this man. Kim Clark Champness. Well, Kim, I only recall an early conversation about the project where he was very, very supportive and wanted to help him and John, John, John, John, John. Oh, the guy who ran much music?

No. No. What era are we talking about? Well, in fact, in that era, big job. John Majors? No, no. He wasn't an on-air guy. He was a behind-the-scenes guy.

uh, rats six foot five of, I can't remember his name, but anyway, uh, the two of them, we all had a meeting together about it. And yeah, no, I, that's a, that's a light touch story. Still, but that ties in of Lori Brown. They were both that much music at the same time. So Richard Krause. Richard Krauss and I both worked at, um, at Zidicoe Southern accent on Markham Street. I know if you remember that old restaurant. I do. I remember that, that number of honest That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So we knew each other from those days. And then from CBC as well, of course, he was, he was a frequent CBC guest when I was working there. All right. Here's a teaser for the listenership and for you, Joey, which is that I am on May 21, I am headlining at the Elma combo. Yes. Yeah, this is happening. It's coming up soon, man. Okay, tickets. If you go to tronelomike.com and you click Elmo gig, I hope my voice is better by May 21. I realize, could I do 90 minutes like this? I guess I'd grant. through it or whatever. But it's coming. It's happening. And there is a reference to Richard

Krause in my 90 minute one man show. This is the only, I think the only teaser I've ever given. So Richard Krause is mentioned in my performance. You both have awesome hair. Well, yes. I'm honored to be in the same company as Richard Krause. The same hair club, as I were? We've got our hair going on here. He's got cooler taste of music, I think. But yeah, he's a good guy. Dawn Ferguson. Okay, here's my story about Don Ferguson is that when I was with CBC, periodically they would have these events that they called, internally they called the Petting Zoo.

This is when the public is invited down and, and, you know, the on-air talent is kind of trotted out to kind of glad hand and so on. So there was a little schedule and Don Ferguson and I were paired up together. We're at a little table in the atrium at the CBCZ Broadcast Center. and Sylvie McLean was the publicist, and she came by with these little name tags for us, Joey Taylor, Don Ferguson, and it said, you know,

you're here for the next 20 minutes and, you know, just say hi and give people the pamphlets or whatever. And Don Ferguson turns to me, he goes, Canadian celebrity. You still need a name tag. That is so true, though,

because, you know, many a Canadian celebrity, waltzes into this very basement, and I think, oh, yeah, You know, yeah, I just took the street car or whatever, and I'm thinking, oh, yeah, this is Canadian celebrity right here. Okay. All right, here's a big name for you.

I hope to see this gentleman on May 21. I don't know who's bought tickets. I don't know how many tickets have been sold, but I bet you if this guy's around, he'd buy a ticket. Steve Paken. Oh, Steve Paken. I first met at the Chichakwa, Shatakwa in Muscoca on Lake Raso, and he kind of fell in love with my presentation that I delivered. there. He was there with his family, just sort of, you know, chilling for the weekend. And he subsequently had me on the agenda twice for like full-length interviews, which was unbelievable.

Talk about the, by way, how did they guitar get the nickname Voyager? Well, we had the first couple of years that we were touring around the country, we had a little questionnaire for people, which was Willie Nelson has Trigger and B.B. King has Lucille. what should be the nickname of this guitar? And, you know, people were all like Maple Leaf and, you know, whatever, all that kind of stuff. And one of the forms that came back was from Lieutenant Colonel Susan Bahariel of the Canadian Armed Forces, who was an extraordinary woman with an amazing story. She was at NORAD command in Colorado on 9-11.

She's, yeah, and endured a lot over her military career. And she had written on her form Voyager. And then she invited us to do a thing at the Canadian Forces College up in North York, which was an amazing, amazing event and generated a whole ton of portraits. And subsequently, when we officially decided to name the guitar Voyager at her recommendation, We had her out to, there's the picture. You've just found it. Yeah, yeah.

There she is. That's, that's in, that's in Winnipeg. In fact, in San Bonifess at the festival du Voyager that takes place in February in Winnipeg, if you can imagine. And we officially bestowed the name at the opening ceremony there. Okay. All right. 2008. This gentleman I'm going to name now lives in France.

Jeff Lombie. Jeff Lombie lives in France? No kidding. Him and his wife up and moved to France just like when the pandemic was starting. Wow. She speaks French. Julie La Fontaine.

Correct. Right. I think she sold off her agency. Her agency. Yeah, they're in France now. Well, that's fascinating. I haven't seen them in ages. I was with the Fountainhead, her talent agency.

and so I went to all the parties and stuff. And my connection to Humble Howard, for example, and Jeff Lumby is through, of course, Julie, and Dan Duran, whose picture I sent you. I saw the Dan Duran photo. And you were wondering, what's the connection? Well, yeah, because he doesn't play, as far as I know, he's not a musician.

No, but we used to, there was this little cluster that at all the Christmas parties for Fountainhead talent, it would be Jeff Lumby, Howard, me, and Dan. And you can guess which two guys were on the right-hand side of the political spectrum and which two were on the left hand. Lumby's favorite politician of all time is Ronald Reagan. Yeah, well, you know, there's a lot of people that we think of as perfectly reasonable Republicans. But where do you put Howard in that? I don't even, because Howard goes where the wind's blowing.

Like sometimes Howard sounds awfully left of center and sometimes he's talking about what a great job Stephen Harper did. Well, I think this is why these conversations were so, so much fun. The four of us would just like, we'd be sitting at that table and drinking wine. And so I can imagine because, of course, Howard and Lombie go way back. Yeah. Way back to like Moose Jaw, I think. And then they were on the air in Montreal before Howard gets recruited to be on the Humble and Fred show here. And that's 1989 when that happens.

So they go way back. They're still best buds, of course. and Dan Duran and Howard go way back. So I guess all three of those people were working somewhere at West in radio way back when. Like we're talking when they were kids, like in the early 20s or whatever. So that trifecta, yeah, that's like they're like brothers. Yeah. Dan was amazing too.

I think my first encounter with Dan was when I was working at Harborfront Center and we were doing a show with what was the name of the? And I like this game. Give me a clue. Who did Hot, Hot, Hot, Hot, Hot. Oh, hot, hot, hot. You mean hot, hot, hot heat from Vancouver? No, no, no, no.

Hot, Hot, Hot. It was a single. I can only take a Buster Poindexter doing it. It was a Soka hit. Is it the satellites? No, I'm trying to make a hook. No, no, it was called, they were called the Burning Onion or something like that. And anyways, it was a big show, February Harborfront Center.

Yeah. And, uh, and CFNY was the media sponsor and they'd sent down two, accidentally, I think. They sent down two people to emcee the show, Deadly Hadley. Yep. And Dan Duran.

Wow. Dan Duran was just producing Humble and Fred at the time, too. He didn't even have an on-air spot. He was just producer for the Humble and Fred show. He's the second, I happen to know this because I currently produced the Humble and Fred show. But the first producer was a guy, the last name was Williams.

I think it might be Dan Williams, but he didn't last too long. think he liked Humble and Fred. That's in like the summer of 89. And then Howard gets his buddy from Out West, Dan Duran to produce the show. And Dan was the producer of the Humble and Fred show, but he didn't have a show on CFMY.

But sometimes you'd hear his big voice on the Humble and Fred show. Wow, that's so funny because I thought of him as on air. But we got to talking backstage. And then the problem was when it came time to like, okay, the band, we're ready to start the show. The band is ready to go. Whatever. Headley had smoked.

a lot of weed in the dressing room. And he was like, I don't want to go out there. Send Dan out there. I'm Dan Duran. I'm Dan Duran and this is Burning Onion. If anything's filmed in Toronto that has an anchor or a news reporter, it's probably played by Dan Duran. Until Kevin, what's his name, took over?

Oh, the guy from the newsroom? No, the guy from... Which Kevin? There's the other, there's that other Toronto anchor who then went to Hollywood and he's like the anchor man on every Hollywood movie. I got to, I don't know that when your name hits your heads, just spit it out.

But okay, so we'll move on because here's a guy who is BFFs with was. I don't know if they're still tight. But Jeff Lombie would often spend, would spend many a night talking about politics and drinking wine with FOTM Ron McLean. Okay. So of course there's a P. We have, there's a controversial piece of Don Cherry's pants in the guitar case,

which have been substantially removed. There's still, the outline of them is still there and the waistband is still there. We have made room for the color that he withheld from us when he donated those. I know you're talking so discreetly, but what are we talking about? So Don Cherry's pants were in this guitar? Yeah, so in the case, we sewed them in. So I had asked for a pair, like I wanted a jacket, of course, who doesn't want a Don Cherry jacket in this thing?

So I had asked for that. And there was a lot of back and forth with his very, very lovely daughter, who was his representative. She's passed away. Oh, has she? I was not aware of that. She was terrific. But eventually she said, you know,

Dad can't bear the thought of anyone cutting one of his jackets. Will you accept a pair of pants? And I was like, look, I don't. It's not the same thing, though. I don't really care. Because it's not like I'm not a huge hockey fan. I'm certainly not a big Don Cherry fan. You're not a big hockey night.

Came ahead. And yeah. So I just, you know, I said, fine, whatever. And so they sent along a pair of black and gray check trousers. Okay. I was like, that says nothing about Don Cherry. But we put them in there and they became like a nice little, during my presentation, a little bit of a punchline.

because we had Karen Cain's two-two and we had Pierre Burton's bowtie. And then there was Don Cherry's pants and there was a cadence to revealing those and it was terrific. But then when he said what he said in 2019, you people, you people, you come here for our milk and our honey.

And you don't wear a poppy. But that's not true. And so I thought, why am I giving this guy so much real estate in the case? And my first impulse was to just take them out, right? But there was, well, first of all, that was going to be impossible for some reasons that I'll explain. But more importantly, I went, I had a school gig up in Unionville, Unionville, Montessori,

and I asked the principal, Dave Treherne, to assemble a student panel for me to talk about this issue, what should I do? Because I didn't want to do anything rash. And he's assembled a panel of, it was mostly girls. grade, you know, so you're eight to ten, very diverse backgrounds. And I said, what do you think? You know, I'm tempted to just pull these things out, but I don't want to, you know, I don't know what should I do.

And they said, well, actually, we think it's important that at least something of them remains in there because it becomes a way for us to open up a conversation about bullying and Islamistopia. This is how I feel about Dundas Street. Yeah. Instead of whitewashing, rewriting history, we won't speak. Like, like, like, keep. the name Dundas and educate children

maybe who this is named after and why it's problematic. I don't know how you learn about things if you just whitewash history. There's a famous, you know, Frankie Boyle, the Scottish comedian? I do know that, actually I'm not sure I know

but possibly. He's got a great series as well worth watching. He's in Bristol. Bristol? With a guy who is, or anyway, It's a famous slave port. And there's a black historian there who talks about exactly that.

I have a similar situation with a piece from the eastern townships of townships of Quebec. And the person, it's slate from the roof of a chapel built by slaves who were brought over by loyalists from Vermont. And we've taken this slate and we've grounded it up and it's in the top of the bridge pins. And Hank Avery was the historian who got us this material. And when they announced that they were changing the offensive name of this place

with a commission that was set up in Quebec to look at many places that were, used this word in Quebec, I called him up and I said, so what do you, this is good, right? You know, what do you think? And he said, well, no, this is like, this is how they whitewash history. It's like it never happened. It's like it never happened. Dundas didn't exist.

Well, you know, you can, I know, you know, Ryerson, the private institution, chose to change their name, which is fine. TMU now, even though I had TMU first. It was the Toronto Mike universe. So what's up with that? Okay, what's that fair? But I get that.

Free advertising for you. Right. Well, they still have, we still talk to. You've got your own subway station now. Yeah, and we still, right. Yes, I do. And we still talk to the Gary's about the Edge, right? Which was named after Edgerton, Ryerson, right?

But I'm a big fan of talking about it. Like, you know, I don't know. I'm happy to talk about it. about, for example, Yassie L. Pueig, who is a very problematic, you know, a signing that needs to be talked about, right? This is not Joey Votto, who's been signed, who is beloved and, like, could be prime minister when Mark Carney steps down or whatever. But so I think we need to have conversations about these things. And I think that if you just, you know, even the Don Cherry thing, you know, and I'll just say this about Don real quick here. So his daughter who passed away suddenly,

just a couple years ago. Her name was Cindy. But I had a conversation this last week with Tim Cherry, who is Don Cherry's son. And Tim Cherry is in the Toronto Mike calendar to come over. And I'm going to have an open and honest conversation about Don Cherry, who is a figure. I find it a problematic conversation because I don't know about you.

We already established you weren't a big hockey night in Canada head. But I would watch my leaves on Saturday night growing up. and I did not leave the TV during the first intermission because I wanted to hear Coach's Corner with Ron McLean and Don Cherry. This was as big a part of the game to me as the Leith game. And that was such a huge part of my life. And I think we need to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to people.

Sometimes things are problematic and troublesome and need to be discussed. I have a whole substack about that that I've just published. Yeah. Tell me and everybody else your substack so we can check this out. What's the name of it? It's six-string nation. Beyond the six-string nation is what it's called. So I'm glad you left a little Don Cherry in that guitar.

Let's talk about Don. Well, hang on. Wait a minute. Because this goes back to the Ron McLean story that I don't want to forget. Okay, yeah, we're on Ron McLean, yes. Well, anyway, okay. So, okay, here's the thing. Basically, when we took out, when we left the outline of the pants and the waistband and the

cuffs, right? But what that did was it freed up the possibility of putting back in the color that he had withheld from us by including materials from people that he might have disparaged, right? So one of the pieces that I got was a piece of carpet, a swatch of carpet from the CCIQ mosque in Sanfoy, Quebec, where those six men were killed. And so it's green carpet with their names in gold on the carpet. That's now in part of that. That's now in part of that. space. A red t-shirt from two-spirited, uh, indigenous dancer icon, uh, René Highway, from the play that his brother wrote. He was, he played the character of, uh, Nana Bush. Um, that t-shirt from Renee Highway is in there as well. And we've just added, this is, this is a first.

Okay. You're, this is a media exclusive at this point. I wish I had a sound bite for this. Okay. Um, we, yeah, that's right. You need a sting for this. Did you do breaking news. Breaking news. And it's a first. And it's a media. And it. And it's a media. And He's voiced by Dan Duran. We've just added some material from taller Cranston, two pieces of stuff from Tol. His sister was over recently. That's right. So that was one of the other connections that we were going to have there.

But yeah. So she gave us two pieces of material from him. And they now, now have been included, again, within the space of Don Cherry's pants. Right. So ultimately, we get the color. We still get the shape of Don Cherry's pants. And so we don't avoid the conversation about, we just don't. See, I like that.

foreground it, right? It's not like he's going to occupy all that space. And that is the problem with these conversations. And as you say, it's important to still have them. But you always have to be mindful of, well, wait, who is occupying the space of this conversation? Who gets, who gets the loudest voice? So what we've done is we've kept Don Cherry's voice in there. But it's not as loud as it used to be. I love it. Yeah. Okay, but back to the Ron McLean. Yeah. Here's the, here's the, here's the, here's the quick Ron McLean story, which is just that you remember when he was in those negotiations. Of course.

Those very... 400,000 Canadian dollars, I believe, is what... Right. So around that time, there was going to be a royal visit at the CBC. And they were doing this stuff in the atrium. And right by that big green elevator shaft, it's in the center of the atrium there, there was this structure went in and it was covered with a drape. You can tell what it was, but it was kind of throne shaped.

I was like, oh, my God. Like, is the queen going to sit there or something? like that. Anyway, so Ron McLean is in the news every day with these problematic negotiations. And we're, we're, I'm going to work one day and I'm in the elevator, you know, lobby whatever with a bunch of people, including and Ron McLean comes in. So we're all waiting for the elevators together. Elevator arrives. We get in every like, there's like eight of us in the elevator. Everybody knows Ron McLean's business at this point, right? We're all standing in a room and everyone's looking at their shoes.

And I'm like, oh, come on. Well, that's funny. So I said to him, I said, oh, and they had just made the deal. And they had just made the deal. And I said, so Ron, congratulations on the deal. Don't you think the throne in the atrium is a little bit much? That's a good line. And he said, yeah, that's my agent.

Doesn't know when to quit. Ron's a sharp guy. But Ron took a lot of heat, too, for in real time, he didn't. Yeah. You know. And you could see the look on his face, right? When it happened, you could see his, he's going like, uh, uh, uh. Yeah, you know, and I will say this.

He is a fast guy. When you're, when you're, I think, I can't remember, I don't think it was, I can't remember if it was exactly live or if it was like almost live. Like, it's live to tape anyways. They, there's some, I, I can't remember. I feel like it's on multiple markets with games ending at different times. So maybe it's live for the first game that gets to the first intermission. And then everyone else gets to the first intermission.

And then everyone else gets. the recording of whatever happened in that six minutes or five minutes or whatever. But in real time, I always think to myself if I'm in that position, like he's getting the voice in his headset and he's throwing to the video of Don Cherry, the Remembrance Day video. Like, he's throwing to a video.

So it's possible that Ron McLean in his mind has already moved on to the next thing he has to do to throw to this video or whatever. And he's not really processing the words coming out of Don's mouth. Right. Like I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt on this because I think he's a, like a moral guy who considers all this deeply or whatever. So maybe that's my bias. I'm a great experience of the guy.

But big hip fan too, ironically. Yeah, that's right. That's right. In fact, that was my dream was that we would get in the hot stove with the guitar and with Gord doing 50 Mission Calf. That was the dream. It never happened. But I did get Rob Baker to play it.

Okay, that's cool. Rob was just at the, it's a good life if you don't weaken, which is the musical in Hamilton that I caught on opening day. Okay. So I realize now I could do 90 minutes talking about this list. So I will try to get going here. But recent, her husband also came over recently, but Carol Off. Carol Off had me on as it happens when she was hosting there to talk about him.

And the great thing about Carol was that like I had, so this was, there was supposed to be a CBC television special slash series about this project. Like I signed into a development deal in 2002, I think. And it was, for four years, it was a nightmare. Now, I was with CBC Radio at the time. And I think a lot of people thought, oh, so it's going to be easy for you? It's like, no. Because you're already inside. I'm in the building.

But it was not. And in fact, it was Lori Brown and I who went and pitched together. Okay. And I got a call from Anton Leo. It was an old friend. from CKLN days. And he said, what did you do in there? Because everyone here is buzzing.

Like that was like people love this pitch. It was fantastic. It was great. And then it took four years before they eventually said, yeah, no, we're not going to do it. It was just, it was a nightmare. And Carol, but we had to race, I had committed to the National Capital Commission in Ottawa to go ahead and, you know, reveal the guitar to the public. It left us in a huge lurch because the federal government had just changed.

change too. So some of the funding that I was expecting got withdrawn. Like it was just a nightmare. Carol had me on as it happens and I told her off mic. Like I said, well, here's what's happening. And she said, they don't get it, do they? They just don't get it. Now, this is often the case between the TV and radio signs at CBC where I think, but I'm always just in these stories. It's like how the sausage gets made or whatever. Because I never, never had any insight into this world. until I started talking to people like you and Carol, et cetera. But Carol off, when I started Toronto mic back in 2012, I sent a note to a producer rapper who I was introduced to

by my late friend Mike Kick, the late great Mike Kick, introduced me to his buddy Ilvibe. And I said, I'm looking for something in the spirit of the As It Happens theme song, but a little more hip hop, a little more cool, a little more Toronto. And that's how the Toronto mic theme was born. Oh, no kidding. I love that Mo Coffman

Yeah, Cochoffman Yeah, Curried soul Swinging Shepherd blues Yeah, yes, curried soul Uh, dun dun dun dun dun Oh, no, that's right.

That's Kurtzol. But Carol Ops, of course, her husband, if the listenership doesn't know, who recently made his Toronto Mike debut and was exceptional.

What a great debut. Lyndon McIntyre. Yeah. There you go. So, and Carol apparently has another book coming out and we'll be back.

So she had a good experience. So, all right. Oh, I had to use this guy's a lawyer for a bit because a notorious racist, and I mean, he had been, like, convicted of, like, I don't know what the official charge is when you're convicted of hate crimes of, you know,

racism. I don't remember what that's called. But this guy was threatening to sue me for comments I made about him, and I had to consult jazz musician and lawyer Ron Davis. Yeah. Wow. Wow. So Ron was my, and Ron told me.

He explained libel, and he explained. And what's the other one? Slander. You got it. One's written, one's verbal, I guess. But he explained that you can't ruin a reputation of somebody who's been convicted of like hate crimes. Right. That's, wow.

That's great. It's so funny because when, you know, I went through, I was going through the list of your guests and the friends. And I, you know, I clocked Ron Davis. And then when you were talking to Annette and Aaron Davis came up and the confusion about Aaron Davis is. A-A-A-R-I-N. So then I thought, is there, does this Ron Davis count?

No, and this Ron Davis, by way, I wanted to have money. He said, well, I want to come on, but could you get me on with Steve Paken? And then I called up Paken, and I said, would you come on of Ron Davis? And he said, of course.

So they came on together. Yeah, that's nice. Ron's a lovely guy. Ron and Danielle Anardi were old friends. Well, Danielle Lannardi got introduced to me first, before she hooked up with, with Ron and we were friends and then she started going up with Ron and the two of them would come over for dinner and stuff so that's how I know he's a sweet man who again and he performed at Harperfront well I was at symphonic symphonic yeah symphronic yeah synchronic he's Ron so symphronic okay talented guy good lawyer and help me out when I needed some legal help now I go to Lauren Honickman but at the time I would go to Ron Davis so

Deanie Petty Deanie Petty speaking of Dan Duran that's right yeah Deanie and I are both with the National Speakers Bureau, and we were both showcasing at the Glenn Gould studio, along with astronaut Dave Williams, Williams. So it was the first, that was the, the first astronaut I met was Mark Garneau. Right. But three astronauts have played Voyager. Can I guess? Yeah.

Chris Hadfield. Yeah. Roberta Bondar. No. Okay. Then I'm out of guess this. Jeremy Hanson. Okay.

Yeah. So right. No, Jeremy didn't play, but Jeremy got his portrait taken with it. Well, Hadfield's a slam dunk there, right? Give him a guitar. Yeah, it's going to be Chris Affield. But yeah, like, I never thought I'd meet one astronaut and I met four. So, and three of them have held the guitar. So, yeah, so I did. And those are like, well, with Dini Petty. Kind of the most famous Canadian astronauts. Except for Roberta Bondar and Julie Pallette. Right, right, right, right. Yeah, well, Bondar is a big deal. I had her on, Roberta Bondar. and I didn't do it in real time, but in post, I added in this Letterkenny bit they do about Roberta Bonder,

but I added the whole thing. So you're listening to a very serious chat with a very smart and serious accomplished woman. And then there's like 10 minutes of letter Kenny just throwing in there. So there's a choice I made. Okay. So cooking with gas. So Dini Petty, who she did it with me remotely, even though she's on the other end of the city, I guess. And then I said to her, and at some point I said, I'd really like to get you in person

because she was doing this TV show. And she essentially said a very sweet way kind of, but like remote or GTFO. Like she said it nicer than that, but it was like, no, she's not visiting the basement, so I never got to me in the basement. But Howard Glassman tells a story on Toronto Mike

where he would be this frequent guest on the Deanie Petty show, like once a week or something. And then, but he feels he lost some co-hosting gig with Deany that he lost to his dear friend Dan Duran. Like Dan just swept in and took this gig that Howard wanted, but there you go. That's a fun story. I have a little, there's another tangential story, but it's one of the loveliest stories about Alex Lifeson. Oh, yeah.

Who has not met the guitar. And I would love for him to meet the guitar. But I used to work at Hernandez-Hideway. You remember Hernandez-Hideway on Youngstreet? I can't recall it. It was a downstairs Mexican Tex-Mex bar at Young and Wellesley. Best margaritas in the city, good food. And we had a regular there.

His name was Les, and he had been a child star. And at this point, he was a much older guy, and he was a little bit rough, a little bit worse for wear. As a kid, he had appeared in Hitchcock's The Birds, and he appeared on Andy of Mayberry as one of Ron Howard's little pals. Yeah. And so he had lots of stories to tell, but at this point he was a janitor at the Enoch Turner schoolhouse, and he had a bit of a bar tab problem, and he would come into this Tex-Mex bar, and he would order a grand marionet and a coffee, and he would sit there nursing the coffee and just ordering grand marionets.

And he was the only person we let him run a tab. and one day he said to me you know I grew up with Alex Lifeson and I've decided I'm going to ask him for some money and I was like

really? Are you sure you want to do that? Like is it going to jeopardize the friendship? And he said, no, I got to do it. Like I'm just in a bad way. I really got to do it. So he'd let me know when he was going to do it

and I was a bartender there. And I come in for my shift the day that I knew that was going to be happening and there's Les sitting at the bar with his coffee and his grandma and I said hey how did you're meeting with Alex go and he said it was amazing it we did it right over here right over at table 12 whatever he said came in we sat down and we caught up a little bit and I was just about to ask him

and Alex said listen to Les before you say anything I was thinking about how you you helped on some of the lyrics on the first album. And I talked to my accountant and he figures it's probably worth some money. So here's a check. And he gave him a check for like $8,000. Like, you know, it was so gracious. Like, it was so lovely.

And it spared everyone's feelings. And it was just, and I just thought, wow, I got a lot of time for Alex Lifson. I'm so glad you told that story. Like, what a heartwarming story. Yeah. He just did, uh, me, music with the Rio Statics, their new album. Alex Lifeson's on that.

And I just saw Tom Cochran open up for the Who at the, uh, well, freshwater stadium or whatever, amphitheater, whatever at RBC amphitheater now, but whatever, I can't keep track of the names.

But, uh, Alex Lifeson came out as a special guest. Wow. Awesome. Oh, my goodness gracious. Okay, I love that story. I mean,

telling you my Tom Cochran story? Yeah. Okay. Oh yeah, do Tom now because I was going to bring them up anyways. Okay. So, so,

I'm, uh, the guitar was still, just an idea. I was still just sort of shopping it around trying to see if I could get it organized to get built. And I was at the convention center, heading down into the bowels of it, right, right down that big long escalator. And Tom Cochran is in front of me. And I said, Tom, I'm Joey Taylor and I've got this project that I just, I feel like I just want you to know about. and he said, okay.

And we're riding an escalator together. And I tell him the idea for this project. And he goes, sounds great. Like, what can I do? That was about it. And I was like, well, you know, thank you. Years later, the guitar is done. It's out in public.

We've done a bunch of festivals. And I'm on a flight with the guitar. And I used to be able to carry it. They let me carry it in the overhead or in the closet of the front, the first class closet or whatever. And I'm on a flight with Tom Cochran. And we land at Pearson. And we kind of acknowledged each other.

And it's not like he recognized me or anything, but kind of acknowledged me because I was the guy carrying a guitar off of a plane. And there in Pearson in the arrivals area, I said, hey, you know, we met all those years ago. Yeah. I told you about this. Well, here it is. and so we post for a series of photos so we're lovely okay and you know another thing that

tom cochran and alex leifson have in common in fact they share this with the aforementioned humble howard glassman but all three are huge golf fanatics who golf early and often yeah you won't get me out there you're not out there no joey okay uh here's a name that i love uh she now lives in mimico shout out to biff naked does she live in mimico now no kidding for years So before the pandemic, she moved from Vancouver to Mimico, and she considers me her neighbor because we're close enough here. And just a lovely, lovely woman. Yeah, she's amazing.

She is also someone who is with my speaker agency, the National Speakers Bureau. And I was out in Vancouver doing a showcase out there with them. And she was part of that program. So we got to know. And I got portraits with her. She's great. Oh, here's a good name because it ties to,

Blair Packham, but the name I'm going to drop on you right now is Arlene Bishop. Yeah, well, and that's the connection there, is that Arlene and I were both on the board of the Ontario Council of Folk festivals at the same time, so we knew each other well. And, yeah, I still wear, Arlene, if you're listening, I still wear my coping t-shirt. She gave me a t-shirt that said coping. She talked about being, being, what do you call it, diagnosed with ADHD as an adult and how that changed. her life and she's got this t-shirt that says coping. So hello to Arlene. She's awesome.

Yeah. Oh, never met her in person, but a couple of zooms with her and quite like her style. Leona Boyd. Leona Boyd. So I can't remember how the connection got made, but she was, she was making this record, uh, Canada, my Canada, uh, whatever. And she found out about the guitar and she contacted me. and I ended up taking the guitar down to the studio there,

where it's down on off Cherry Street somewhere, and spent an afternoon with her while she used my guitar to, to record the song with. Okay, so now as a producer of my own show, I realize that, you know, we've gone an hour, and I'm like, there's a lot of names up in the list, and I need to talk to you about other things. So what if I said the name and you get like, you get like,

I hate to say it, but like, do you get like 20 seconds? Okay, okay. Let's do it. Tim Bova-Conti. has played it many times in a guy around town. He's in the guess who now? No kidding, eh? Shout out to Tim.

And I met him through Blair as well. So shout out to him. Blair's hooking me up of everybody. Oh, man, I'm going to see these guys in the summer. Love Stars, Torquil Campbell. Yeah. So they played the guitar on Canada Day. Amy played, it was a thrill for me,

the, from elevator love letter. Gling, ling, ling, wing, wing, wing, wing, wing, wing. They're having a resurgence, you know, because this whole scene, this whole broken social scene, scene and all the bands that come out of it, be it feist or, uh,

you know, like stars or metric or whatever. Absolutely having like a nostalgic resurgence like 20 years later. Yeah, yeah. Well, and Amy played it multiple times since then and she played it solo down on Harborfront.

But Torquil, uh, we were in, uh, we were in, uh, the Toroni restaurant on Victoria Street. Right.

And, uh, he came up to me, uh, we were both at different tables and he said, I love your project, anything I can do to help. Let me know. His brother recorded something for me.

He came over for a podcast I produced, Benedict Campbell. And I'm going to play it for you because I love it so much and it'll tie in to everything. When there's nothing left to burn, you listen to Toronto, Mike. There you go. You know what that's referencing. Okay. Oh my God. I just saw her again.

We talked about the Kurt Swinghammer on my wall. Maybe that was before I pressed record. I can't remember now. but this woman's full-time job is Busting My Chops. She loves it. There's a glint in her eye. There's no one on the planet right now who likes busting my chops more than Lori Cullen.

She's amazing. I love Lori Cullen. And so she, we did, two years ago now, Henderson Brewing made a six-string nation citrus wheat beer. And we did a launch there. And subsequently, we came back to do the full presentation,

like the one I'm doing on the 29th, at Henderson's, and I asked Lori if she wouldn't mind coming, and so she played a few songs as part of the, what we call the performance pocket part of the presentation. Love it. You have shouted out Henderson's. They're doing great work with you,

and I will tell you, Great Lakes brewery sent over fresh craft beer for you, Joey. So you're bringing some great lakes. Thank you, Great Lakes. So another great... Connections there, too. Okay, good to hear. what's the connection to the

you're not a hockey guy so this won't interest you but Jeff Merrick worked at Great Lakes for a couple of weeks and then at around that same time he worked at Perk Lawn Cemetery and he says he's the guy who dug the hole that Harold Ballard went into No way

This is the story he tells me That's deep hockey There you go So Harold Ballard Perklawn Cemetery Okay I said 30 seconds each name I suck at this Okay but oh my God

I mentioned my show at the Elmacombo made 21 and I'm urging everyone to grab a ticket. What an experience on stage with me is going to be Rob Pruse. He was keyboardist with the spoons. Tell me about Gordep. Gordep, I sent you a picture or two of Gord playing it at Hughes Room. It was Gordon and Sandy.

And we kind of go way back, only that Gordon and Sandy did a, used to be regulars at the aforementioned Zydico on Markham Street. They played there every whatever. and yeah, got to know them a little bit then. Oh, a recent FOTM. Break out your ukulele here. Melanie Dohn.

Melanie Done was a regular performer at Harborfront Center where I was a coordinator. And she was one of the first people I told about the project. And I remember her talking about Schumannacchity and the place, the importance of that place in her heart. And so she kind of, in a way, guided some of the, early conception of the project as being not just about famous stuff.

It needed to bring the country alive, that every piece that went into the story needed, into the guitar needed to tell a story. And it had to pull from every aspect of Canadian life, every perspective of Canadian life, and not just, you know, it couldn't just

be a guitar of donuts and hockey. Right. No, Melanie Done, who had a great chat with her in this basement, and then now I notice on Instagram, she's like liking a lot of my stuff. I feel like she's engaged now in the original TMU here. So much love to her. I'd love to get the guitar in her hands, actually.

Well, we can make that happen, right? Yeah, let's do it. We can do that. Now, closest I get to go into church these days is a nice long chat with Jay Douglas. Oh, Jay Douglas. Well, and Jay Douglas, again, this is another Harborfront connection. And so he was regularly performing there. but he was also close with Sandra Whiting

who was a friend of mine from Harbourfront Center and well we would sometimes see them out and about socially and he's just one of those man what a gentleman that guy is and so I mean such deep deep deep history and someone I had early conversations about the project with

okay Rick Emmett Rick Emmett of course part of the song studio with Blair and and so it's too bad I got a picture of him holding the guitar are somewhere, but I couldn't find it. So all I've been able to send you was a picture of Blair playing it on stage at the old Hughes Room and Rick accompanying. This is really the Blair Packham show.

Yeah, that's right. My headphones right now. All things Blair. All right. So you kind of did this off the top. So we talked about Colin Linden, who's not an FOTM, but Stephen Fearing and, of course, Tom Wilson, right? So we did Blackie in the Rodeo Kings segment.

So tell me about Godo, Greg Godovitz. I was at the, so Didario gives me my strings and other stuff too. They've been super supportive, Dadario, Canada. And they had me, they had us doing the portraits. So my photographer is Doug Nicholson and we've done these portraits. We've now about about 150,000 portraits of 15,000 different people in every province and territory of Canada and in Italy holding the guitar. And so Didario sponsored us to be part of.

the Music Industry Association Conference in Toronto in 2007, I think it was, or 2009. And Gatto was there, of course. Of course. And what a swell guy. And we did a great series of portraits with him. And then he moved to Calgary. And I was involved with what was then the Cantos Music Foundation that then morphed into the National Music Center.

So I was there. They had me present the project at their. the unveiling of the renderings for the new building that became the studio bell where they are situated now and Greg was at that too so we had a bit of a reunion there. Okay, I'm going to have to ring a bell when you hit the 30 second mark. This is very difficult. I know, I know, I know.

But what was I going to say about Greg Godovitz? I can't remember. Oh, yeah, you mentioned Italy. Yeah. So I thought I'd, you know, jump off that ledge and tell you, in my freezer upstairs. Okay, Joey, I'd. I got a large, frozen, delicious lasagna.

I will take it. Sent over by Palma Pasta, a delicious authentic Italian food. They have outlet stores in Mississauga and Oakville, but you can go to palma pasta.com because I think they're in some longos. I think there's other ways to get it, but just get your hands on some Palma pasta lasagna, damn it, but you're getting a lasagna.

Let me get my hands on that. That's happening, brother. That's happening. Cooking with gas now. Just chatted with him remotely from BC. Bill Henderson. Bill Henderson, I was actually trying to remember whether or not he's actually held the guitar,

but we did a thing with Sherry Ulrich out in Canmore, maybe it was, something like that. And of course, Bill was involved with like an industry circle. So we met, we've talked, and it was really a Sherry Elric connection that I was thinking there. He's retired from the road. They're done.

They're done. My goodness. Chilliwack. Okay. Sometimes when we touch. Dan Hill. My parents were friends with his parents. They worked in the same area as Dan Hill, who was ombudsman, race relations advisor to the government of Ontario back in the day.

And they lived in our neighborhood. We went to the same high school. Dan was a bunch of years earlier than me, but he was produced by Matt McCauley and Matt and Tim and Megan were friends of mine from down the street. Well, Matt was older than me, but Dan used to sing in the washrooms at Victoria Park Secondary, where I went. And very formative influences on me, musically, the McCauley family. And, of course, then they produced the Dan Hill record. And then I was delighted when I was at the Sunshine Coast Writers Festival when my book came out and I appeared at the festival in Seashell, B.C., along with Long as,

Lauren Hill. Lauren Hill. No, Lauren Hill. Yeah, Lauren Hill. My wife saw her apparently very late

for her concerts. Yeah, I heard about that. Yeah, I heard about that. Yeah, no, Lawrence, Lawrence Hill, it was lovely

and actually ordered prints of his portraits that are up in his home. Okay. Love it, but we got to shout out FOTM, Fred Malin,

who was heavily involved with the production of sometimes when we touch. Fred Malin. Okay. Also, Santa Jaws. Do you have any memories? You're maybe too young

for Santer. I remember Santa Jaws. Sure. He was, that was it really? I had that single. Okay. Well, so,

it's funny, I mentioned Rob Pruse because he said, did I mention, I'm on the, at the L. McCombo on me 21. I can't remember

if I mentioned that yet or not, but Rob also had that 45. And if you're of a certain vintage, that Santa Jaws 45, was pretty popular. Yeah. Okay, well,

that's Fred Mullen. And he ties in with Dan Hill. Okay. I'm doing a terrible job. We're going to spend three hours on this list, but I am enjoying it. But recent FOTM

Gordon Gordon. Gordie, well, there's another kind of sounded like he was coming off a bender. I keep, we keep coming back to the two, a few places, Harborfront Center, CBC and Zidico. And Gordy, Big Sugar was, were regulars there at Zydico.

And so then after he moved out to Alberta and, you know, lost the, well, lost, gave up, presumably the Hugo Boss sponsorship that he had for his suits when he was with Big Sugar. Right. and adopted a whole new look. And we did Canada Day on Parliament Hill four times in total. But I think it was the second or third one.

Gordy was there. Big Sugar was there maybe, but certainly Gordy was there. And so we had a really nice reunion backstage and got some shots of him with the guitar, too. Colin James. Colin James. Four mentioned arguably one of the first people to play it because he played. I think he was the first person to rehearse with it in the two days of rehearsals before. the actual debut on Canada Day 2006.

He played into the mystic on it, lovely guy. And he was one of the people, I know, this is going to go over my 30 second limit, but he was one of the people, you know, some people would say to me, well,

you know, the action's a little bit low. And, you know, he's got big hands and he was like, oh, the action's kind of high. Or no,

he said the action was kind of low. Other people said it was kind of high. And it's like, this is going to be my life now, you know, like navigating people's preferences. Right, right. Okay, so I only, who is it?

Very recently I was talking to Tom Wilson. I bumped into him at the, it's a good life if you don't weaken. And he took credit for Colin James coming to this basement. And I had always, maybe wrongly giving credit to Eric Alper. So it's only come to light recently. Tom says he talked to his dear friend, Colin James, and said, you got to visit this guy's basement.

So who knows who's responsible. But yep, Colin James was in the basement here. Andy Kim's been in the basement. Andy Kim, what a sweet guy. So he's a good friend of Andy Stochanskys. And so I was at a bunch of dinner parties with Andy Kim, which always felt so cool to me. And then we did Andy and Ron Sexsmith.

They wrote that Christmas song together. And they were doing it. It was a Christmas show at Hughes Room where the guitar was there. And here's the, here's the, I'm going to take my more than 30 seconds here on this one. So Ron was going to play the guitar. during the song with Andy. So it was on stage with the two of them.

The backing band was Derek Downham, Kevin Fox, and I can't remember on drums, Adrian on drums. He was the guy who's always on drums with that crew. But anyway, apologies there for not remembering that name off the top of my head. Anyway, so Ron finishes the song, and Derek Downham says,

hey, can I play that guitar? I said, yeah, of course, sure. So, and then he said, I sweat a lot. And I said, that's okay. And Kevin Fox says, no, no, no, he sweats a lot. And I said, listen, it's fine. A little bit of Derek Downham sweat in there would be just fine. And so he took it and he played it for the next couple songs.

And then we got great shots of Derek with the guitar when he was with Elliot Brood. And we were at the Salmon Arm Festival. Elliot Brood had a song. So similar to, there's a wolf parade song called The All Believe in Anything that had just had a resurgence thanks to heated rivalry. But I was obsessed with for a while. At the same time, I was obsessed with a song by Elliot Brood called The Bridge. Like this song, I would just get into a song like that and it just on a continuous loop.

Yeah. I wonder if that's the same song that I'm thinking of. The Bridge. I have a, I have totally have an Elliott Brood song that I looped a lot for sure. Yeah, Elliot Brood Bridge. Hold on here. I'm sure it was called the Bridge. Yeah, it's called the Bridge. All right. So, yeah, it's from like the mid-2000s. When is this? 2000? I got to dig this up. But this song, and I urge people, just stop what you're doing and go listen to Elliot Broods the bridge.

And you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. And I had the same reaction at the, like, maybe around the same time. Two, Wolf Parades, I'll believe in anything. It's like, what are these Canadian songs? Like, what's going on here? Okay, what a moment. All right, man, I'm serious now. Listen, I've been a nice, guy this whole time, but I can't, I can't, this is unbelievable. I got so many names. So can I cherry pick names or is that offensive? No, you do what you do what you need to do. Only because of time constraints. You can put it in the show notes. I don't even, okay, well, I'm going to cherry pick, although this is, so we've already done Humble Howard. Okay. So I'm going to say Skydiggers, Andy Mays.

Josh Finlayson played it on stage a couple times, uh, most of thrillingly at the Illuminaqua Festival. They did, uh, from, uh, um, What was it, to Marjorie from, all of a sudden, the name of the first, the place in Alberta just left me. But anyway, yeah. Okay, Craig Northy. Craig Northy at the Exclaim Cup in 2007, I think.

Great portrait with him. Jane Sibory. Jane, who is a delight and I heard her on your show. That was something. Yeah. You know, she's otherworldly. I was introduced to her before her first record by a guy named John Elmsley. And so I was thrilled to put the guitar in her hands of the Vancouver Folk Festival.

Okay. I'm not sure if I'm legally allowed to go beyond Jane Sibri without playing this little clip of Jane Sibri. I feel I have to do it. So let me see if I have this clip of her. There she is. Do you Jane remember who directed the video for Mimi on the Beach? Yes, it was Dick. I think Dick is of some name that I can't remember.

I'm sorry, but... Well, let me jog your memory just because I was watching it recently. And I saw the last name Olexiac. So Alexiac, and then I did a little Googling because I know an Alexiac. I know a couple of Alexiac. So one happens to be the most decorated Canadian. and Olympian of all time. And then another, an NHL player.

But it turns out the director of that video is the father of Penny Alexiak, the Olympic swimmer. Wow. She wasn't born and needed a Mimi. No. For the surfboard, that's too bad. No, but that's kind of a wild little, uh, little coincidence, right?

It's kind of wild that the person who directed your, your biggest, well, it's debatable, but your first big single, uh, was, eventually would father, the most decorated Olympian in the history of this country. Okay. I don't find it that interesting.

No. Okay. It's devastated. It's moderately interesting, but not a huge thing I wouldn't say. All right. So there you go. I feel I have to play the Gen C. She really set me straight.

I get very excited over that, what I call a fun fact. Possibly a mind blow. That's how big I was on that particular nugget, but she wasn't here in this. I don't know. I didn't find it that interesting. Get out of my basement. Okay. Bob Wiseman, speaking of wild adventures, my one hour of Bob Wiseman.

Yeah, he's a lovely and sweet guy. And we had coffee together a bunch of times. I, when I used to run the Sororan Park Festival, when I lived right overlooking Sororan Park, I asked him to play live to Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. that we showed. It was fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.

He's a great guy. He does this thing called Two Piano's No Rodeo that he does with Michael Boguski, who's the current keyboardist for Blue Rodeo. Very interesting tandem. Okay.

Shout out to Baguoski. Okay. Cherry picking now, skipping some names because of time. Hawksley Workman. Hawksley Workman, I used to bump into him in the Air Canada lounges

when we were busy flying around the country and we encountered him a couple of times. on at festivals and did wonderful portraits with him in Edmonton and he played it live in Edmonton and maybe somewhere else too. I just love his work so much. I think he's so brilliant. Yeah. And I like that guy too. Very cool guy.

Speaking of cool people, Garvia Bailey. Garvia Bailey was one of the early producers on my CBC show Global Village and we got early portraits with her in Guelph, actually, where she's from at the Hillside Festival. I think she'd be a great host of Metro Morning. What do you say? Yeah, I think so too. Garvia's great. I don't know if she wants the gig. I haven't asked her,

but if she wanted to wake up that early. Well, you know, what's funny is she's been great on Q. Yeah, she was. Yeah, I mean, CBC, you know, CBC is a problem place in lots of ways. I certainly have my issues with how my own departure there went, and I know that Garvia does too. And yet they managed to convince.

convince her to come back and it's worked out well for her. Yeah, well, Tom Power had a parental leave. And Garvia was filling in and she did a great job. It's funny, the other woman who would often fill in for Q, Talia Schlinger, yeah. Is busy in Hamilton because she stars in this. It's a good life if you don't weaken. Oh, there you go. And she does a great job in that one here.

Okay, so Brent Bamberie, speaking of CBC. Again, just a pal from the CBC days for, sure, lovely guy. Okay, we'll stick with CBC for a moment. Matt Galloway. He was also an early producer on Global Village, and I'll never forget him. He's like, he's just, I can, could not think of a better person to take over Metro Morning when he did.

Right. And a better person to take over the current. He's so sharp. He's, you know, people would say to me, oh, you know, the host chair is coming up at Metro Morning. You should go for that. It's like, I couldn't do that. That's not what I do.

Matt Galloway was perfectly suited to that. Oh, I agree. Andy Barry to Matt Galloway was one of the great transitions there. That whole transition was fantastic. And we have wonderful portraits of Andy Barry with the guitar. He had me on shortly after the guitar was born, along with Madagascar Slim playing live. And Andy Barry, like Matt Galloway, I think, has a huge amount of curiosity. It's just amazingly curious person.

Another curious person, FOTM Danny Elwell. Yeah, I just know her from back in the old CKLN days. Okay, CKLN. So since we're in CKLN, DJ Ron Nelson. Ron and I went to high school together at Victoria Park. And I remember riding around with Ron in his yellow Toyota Tercell. Ron, if you're listening, I'll never forget it. Good times.

So, I mean, fantastic voyage. I mean, yeah. I'm looking at, there's a maestro, a couple of maestro, 12 inches up here, but there's a Dream Warriors one here.

Yeah, they literally did that in Ron's home studio. Exactly. And now the legacy begins and all that. So important. Well, and he's become like, yeah,

like when he started fantastic, because I was at CKLN when he started that too. And, man, just became the place. And he's become such a sort of a, like,

he's the grand old man of Canadian rap, now. Although he did do a pivot to reggae. But, yes, but you're right. He's the,

you can't do a Canadian hip-hop story without DJ Ron Nelson. Absolutely. All right, I'm going to do a few more names. Who am I going to pick on here? Okay. So I,

did I mention I met the Elmo on May 21? I can't remember. But May 22, if I survive May 21, and if I don't die on stage, like Humble Howard things might happen. On May 22, my guest will be in this basement,

Charlie Angus. Hmm. Well, Charlie Angus and I have multiple connections, mostly through Cobalt, Ontario. And he interviewed my dad, who was deeply involved in labor relations stuff for an anthology kind of thing that he wrote. And then, of course, he was, we had a relationship with Jack Layton. and when we went to Parliament Hill in 2007 to do portraits with politicians of all stripes, we got great ones with Peter McKay, for example. We did ones with the caucus at the time, which was Paul Dewar, now dead, Jack Layton, now dead, Peggy Nash,

and Parkdale. That's right. And Charlie. And then, of course, we did a thing at the classic theater in Cobalt, Ontario, and Charlie came out with my guitar to perform. the Cobalt song. Amazing. Okay, so I'll see him again on the 22nd, if I survived the 21st. Say hello.

We'll close up a couple more politicians. Everybody loves it when we talk about politicians, but Bob Ray. Bob Ray, my mom was Bob Ray's executive assistant for many years when he was in opposition, not when he was in the premier's office. He's kind of incredible. So he was part of one of my early honorary patrons. And I would send out little email updates to, to my honorary patrons to let him know how things were going.

And, you know, I got a couple of responses now. And it didn't matter. They were there to be, you know, to attract funders or government people or whatever to my, to the project to lend it some, some, some, umph. And, um, uh, Bob Ray would answer whether I dropped my email at six in the morning or midnight or two in the afternoon. He would come back 10 minutes later with like, cogent remarks on what I had said.

He's an amazing guy and came out to get his portrait done when we were at the spoke club on the occasion of the book launch. And, you know, he came to, I let him know when my mom was dying and he came out to the hospital and stuff. And he, you know, he's, yeah, he's a minch. Well, all you need to know is that that man slummed it in this South of Tobical basement talking to some independent podcaster for whatever, 60 to 90 minutes. That tells you what kind of guy Bob Bray is.

And we'll close with a woman who, Ralph Benmergey told me, we could never have this woman. I mean, I look back at Ralph. I'm going to, I saw him at that, It's a Good Life if you don't weekend. I'm going to rough him up a little, Ralph Benmergy, because he said to me, Mike, we can't ask the premier of Ontario, Kathleen Wynn,

to visit your South Atobical basement. Like, he was like ashamed. I had to go find another studio and record a Ralph, Kathleen, Wynn conversation there. And at some point I was chatting with Kathleen Wynne. She was no longer in office. But I'm like, I kind of shared the story. And she said, oh my God, she says,

I would absolutely have no problem visiting. She hasn't, she hasn't had those ears about her. You know what I mean? This was in Ralph's head. And I don't know why. But she did eventually visit the South Atobico Basement Studio for an episode of Toronto Mike, Kathleen Winn did. So give me your Kathleen Wynn connection.

And then we're going to finally move on. Just that we did a portrait session at the Ontario Ledge and Kathleen Wynn came down to get her portrait taken, which is super cool. I got the very, like she was a very accessible, very decent person. So, and because, yeah, I think probably because there's so many educational outcomes for Sixth String Nation, like we do a lot of school presentations and stuff. And so she's got our eye on education as former education minister. And so she really liked the project a lot.

So in case this gets buried here, because we're going to talk about that radio stuff, I want to talk about, I love talking radio, but Sixth String Nation, we've spent a lot. a lot of time talking about six string nation, but what exactly is happening on May 29th, 2026 at 8 p.m. at Small World Music Center? So it's kind of a, it's a, all-guns-blazing kind of event.

It's an amazing little facility down there. I was involved with Small World many, many, many years ago when it first got off the ground. They now have this remarkable little theater in the Young Place building at 180 Shaw Street. We're doing an event with them, so I'll be delivering the latest iteration of the presentation. You know, it changes over the years as context changes and politics changes and all that, but there are a few key stories, but, you know, I've kind of reframed things a little bit.

So this is a new iteration of the multimedia presentation that I deliver. We have a segment, which normally is just about 10 minutes long called the performance pocket where someone plays the guitar or a couple people play the guitar. In this case, we've got the performance pocket built into the presentation, and that will be filled by Eunice K-Tan, who's a Malaysian-Canadian currently on tour in Asia. So she'll be playing it during that segment. We're going to take a short intermission. There's going to be some snacks provided by a newcomer kitchen.

We're going to have wine and beer. And then we're going to have four more performers, each doing a few minutes on the guitar. Tara Guerrari, Carla Garcia, J.E. Lopez. They're all part of the Small World Music Incubator program. So they're all, you know, very experienced artists, very diverse talents. And they're each going to bring Voyager to life in its own way. And then afterwards, after the presentation, and after the performances, we're going to be doing free portraits with people. So this is your chance to literally hold history in your hands. It's free. The concert is not free. In fact, it's a money losing proposition for us, but the whole thing is going to be shot on some high-deaf videos that we will finally have the definitive document of the

presentation. We don't just do one portrait of people. We do multiple. So you sign in and we take your email and we'll do as many portraits as my photographer's happy and you're happy. And it becomes a document, a record of the event, for one thing. But it also makes you part of this gallery of 150,000 images that have been taken across the country. And we send you those electronically following the event. And where do you go to get tickets? To smallworldmusic.com.com.com.com.ca. I've got a link in there somewhere.

Google Small World Music, May 29. You'll find it, everybody. We'll find it for sure. Because I'm looking at a QR code, but I don't know how to share that via podcast. I haven't figured that out yet. How to scan a podcast. But cool.

The event sounds really cool. Six-String Nation. Sounds like Canada. And all that stuff included. Like it's a night out, man. It's a thing. Okay. That's a big deal.

So go to me at the Elmo on the 21st and then go to that on the 29th. Little music here. As we segue out of six-string. The album is... Let me get some voice over here. Okay, but tell me what song is playing in the background here. This is called Les Chanson de Voyager.

It's by David Leisque. David had seen my presentation a couple times and then approached me and said, someone's got to write some songs for these. And I said, well, if you're going to do that, you should probably take the guitar for a bit and get to know it. And so he took it for a couple weeks.

He wrote six songs for it, five songs for it, including this one. It's got different voices. And that's his voice. Yeah, that's him from the video about the making of. And the great thing about this particular song, the rest, the other songs are drawn from the materials in the guitar. This one is actually just about the spirit of the guitar itself. The story in guitar. And every instrument that you hear, the guitars, the lead guitar, the drums, the bass are all played on Voyager.

Very cool, very cool. A couple more partners I'm going to thank here before I ask you about this radio career of yours, which looks pretty cool. I got a measuring tape for you, Joey. This is courtesy of Ridley Funeral Home. Thank you. I need that. You got that. You never know when you need to measure something.

Brad Jones from Ridley Funeral Home has a great. podcast, which is now available also in video form. That's a brand new change for Life's Undertaking. So subscribe to Life's Undertaking. And on the Ridley Funeral Home Facebook page, you can see video of Brad and I recording every

couple of weeks as well. So that's a great podcast. And one more podcast, I will shout out, is Building Toronto Skyline and Mike and Nick. These are a couple of podcasts from Nick Aienis, who is a proud sponsor of this podcast, helping to

amplify cool stories like yours, Joey. So much love to Nick Aienis. And last but not least, Recycle MyElectronics.C.A. That's where you go. I can imagine you might have old cables, old devices, old electronics in a drawer, in a room maybe, Joey. Don't throw that in the garbage.

Those chemicals end up in our landfill. Go to Recyclemyelectronics.ca. Put in your postal code and find out where you can drop it all off to be properly recycled. I need that. Memorize that URL. Recycle myelectronics.com. Okay, Joey, before we say goodbye,

that was very thorough, very interesting. I'm glad we got to meet, but I couldn't help you reference the fact you were on CBC Radio. I'm a big CBC radio fan. Can you tell me about your radio broadcaster, producer, writer hosting career? Well, I did,

I leapt from CKLN onto Global Village at CBC Radio, which was, it lasted for almost 10 years. It was a national show and went out on shortwave as well. And it was an early pioneer of online stuff.

We also, that's where Andy Berry comes in again. I remember him being so interested in the way that we used file sharing to produce the show. And then, you know, me and my

my pal, Paolo Pietro Paolo, whose father also worked at CBC. Paolo was a producer there, and we were frustrated by the fact that there was no home for electronic music on CBC radio, and we thought there was this

kind of bias against it. And we came up with this idea for a show, and we did a little test where we went out to Roncesville, we went to a bunch of bars, and we asked, what's the relationship? between music and electricity.

And we were in a, we were in Gate 403, which had, it was set up for live music, and they had the CD player going and all that kind of stuff. We said, what's the relationship between electricity and music? And the guy said, well, there isn't one. I mean, you know, you don't need electricity to make music. You just play an instrument, whatever. We were like, wow, you've got mics plugged in over there. You've got amps.

You've got everything. And we embarked on this series called The Wire, the Impact of Electricity, on music, which covered that relationship going back over 100 years. I did some of the last interviews with Les Paul and Carlyne Schauchhausen and one of your guests too. I think Alan Cross was in there and a bunch of others. That series won a Peabody Award and several others. Wow.

It was an amazing series. I got to say, I absolutely loved this series. Oh, you do. Oh. I thought it was so well done and it's just a wild coincidence when I'm like, oh, Joey Taylor and I was chatting with Blair Packham

and mentioned the wire. I could talk about my favorite TV show of all time, the wire, but this is the wire, the impact of electricity on music. It was excellent. I didn't know about the Peabody Award. That's cool.

Yeah, in fact, we got our Peabody from John Stewart at the Waldorf Astoria at the ceremony there. And that same year, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, had one, so we got to hang out with them. Wow. And Battlestar Galactica as well.

So I was hanging out. I was having martinis with Starbucks in the lobby bar at the Waldorf Astoria, and I thought, this is my life. This is kind of awesome. No, well done. Well done. And then we did a follow-up to that as well. The nerve. The nerve. The nerve, yeah. The nerve,

music and the human experience. So it covered six episodes that covered, you know, music and war, music and love, music and emotion. So where would you hear this today. Yeah, this is the problem, right? So you're telling me there's no legal way to listen to this right now. I get everyone all hot and heavy about the wire, the impact of electricity on music.

And I don't, there's nowhere I can direct them to actually listen to this. No, I think, you know what, I'm going to send you a link. Some time ago, CBC made some of it available. however it's it's very hard to find to go just go on and but also why some of it like why not you you produce this you you own this and it's great why not make it available that should be part of their mandate well i i believe so too and i encourage everyone to write letters and say bring it back because this was a great series um and and still relevant that's the great thing you listen to it now and it's still like, wow, this still, this hasn't aged too badly at all.

We kind of wound up with MP3s and so on, but it's still a great series, and it should be available. Part of the, one of the innovative things that we did on that show was that we played the entirety, following an interview with Mark Kingwell about it, which was great, we played the entirety of Bohemian Rhapsody to kind of reassemble the story. song after the conversation we'd had about it. And that's one of the reasons why I think they can't put it online. It's always something like that, right?

It's always some licensing thing. And geez, welcome to my world. Okay. In fact, that song I just played, the only song I played in this episode, is that going to get me flagged on Spotify? What do you know about it? No, I think David Lees will be delighted. It's all independently done.

It turns out. So I closed every episode of this podcast with, Rosie and Grave from Shakespeare My Butt, which is, of course, we talked about that off the top. I saw lowest of the low play. It's weird to see lowest of the long concert. And the fifth song being Rosie and Gray, because they always close with Rosie and Gray,

and then you leave. This is like a Pavlov dog thing, which is why I close every episode with it. I had to change it to a cover because I kept getting flagged by YouTube and Spotify specifically. And the owner of the song, I don't know if he's owner, that's a problem. But the guy who wrote the song,

and I think he owns it in some regard, Ron Hawkins said, I approve of this. I like you playing this. Please play this. But it didn't, the bots don't seem to care. Like, I need, so I don't know how the bots work and how they decide what's a piece of unlicensed music and what's something that you can actually play. I don't know.

So it's not as simple as the guy who owns the song and wrote the song saying, please play my song. Yeah, it's far more complicated than that, which is this world. And I feel like that's your next series. You've got to talk about this, this world, this AI source. slop and the bots running this and that. And we need a sequel. We do.

Oh, listen, I would gladly do it. You just need someone to pay for it. Yeah. Yeah. I hear that, brother. I hear that. I have a question, though, about your show Global Village. Like, why did Global Village, it ran for a decade, right?

Like, why did it come to an end? Well, that's a good question. I mean, I think, you know, it was around the time when CBC was rebranding Radio 2. I was away from a classical station. So it became Radio 1, which was more information programming, and Radio 2, which was going to be music, and they were going to broaden it out. And, you know, one of the great disappointments for me was that,

well, we don't need Global Village anymore because there's going to be all kinds of so-called world music. It's going to be very diverse on the platform and so on. And all kinds of artists, good friends, they signed, they were recruited to sort of endorse this because they thought, well, you know, yes, the new Radio 2 is going to, it's going to feature our music more. This is going to be great. And then CBC Radio 2 just totally turned their backs on, on them to a large extent. Disappointing.

Yep. Jeez, okay. So when do you leave the CBC? 2009, I think eight or nine. Eight or nine. Okay. In miserable, miserable circumstances. I also, I hosted the overnight show that was called Nightstream, which sounded to me like you had sort of bladder issues.

But that's true. It was a dreadful, dreadful program that I was ashamed to be part of. What's it like to, yeah, I always wonder, oh, I guess sometimes for money you have to host things you don't love. Well, they stuck me in a gulag where nobody ever visited and I produced the entire show by myself. it was just the most isolating and I had to work with and you'll understand this I have a vast library of music at home

I listen to constantly listen to new music I'm obsessed with new music and they gave me a library of 4,000 songs to work with seven days a week that was supposed to cover midnight to 6 a.m. or 1 a.m., whatever it was, a five-hour radio show with 4,000 songs seven days a week.

You can imagine the repetition. And it had to go from folk to classical. So you weren't a happy camper. And I guess the partying was not amicable. Not sweet sorrow. Just sorrow. Thanks. Yesterday for Mother's Day, my wife and my youngest daughter went to see this.

it's called and Juliet yeah yeah they loved it like they both absolutely loved it it's songs from Max Martin is the songs and stuff and Julia but it's this world where Juliet doesn't die at the end of Romeo and Juliet like what would have happened next or whatever

and I just thought of because I also just recently watched Hamnet the film and she won best actress but Anne Hathaway but not the actress it gets very confusing when you talk about Anne Hathaway But I absolutely loved Hamnet.

And I've had a bit of Shakespeare. And I just talked about Shakespeare, my butt. So I think there's a lot of Shakespeare on the brain here, Joey, is what I'm telling you here. This guy's still kicking ass in 2026. Hey, how was this? Is there anything we didn't talk about where you're going to be driving home or whatever and kicking yourself? Yes.

Well, do you want me to, what is it? No, no, I do. I just mean that once I get in the car. Well, you know, like it. It's not too late. That's what I'll figure out of it. A long buildup here before we get to the Easter eggs that Rob Pruse put in this cover of Rosie and Gray from Shakespeare, my butt. But how was this for you?

Oh, this was great. This is like a normal, nice actual conversation. I feel like I should shout out all the names I skipped, right? Like I skipped Rob Bowman, who was an amazing guest. Again, CKLN connection going way, way, way, way back. So good. And I skipped because I actually don't really remember him because he was interviewed sort of more by Gare Joyce than I did. and Gerr Joyce put him on,

but Roy McGregor, I feel like I need another crack at Roy, but Roy McGregor is an FOTM. Oh, well, so here's the thing. Yeah. When this project was floundering, when the government changed, when the Harper Conservatives got elected,

Bev, I had been promised $50,000 by the Department of Canadian Heritage. Bev Otto was the new culture minister. She just crossed me out and left me completely stranded. And I was like, What am I going to do? Roy McGregor wrote a piece in the paper saying,

why is this guy having problems? This is an amazing project that deserves the full support of Canadians. And if it wasn't for his article, the bushes wouldn't have been beaten as they were. And some very generous sponsors emerged to get me over the finish line. Well, I'm glad we got that key nugget in here. Yeah, thank you, Roy. And I'll just shout out Mark Breslin.

Yuck Yuck Yucke. I used to go to Salons with him through my friend, Robin Payne. And one of the Gary's, Gary Cormier. Gary Cormier and Gary Topp. I mean, I was at the edge more times than I could count and spent some time just chatting with Gary Cormier. And recently, Gary Topp was a fan of my show at C.K.L.N. too.

So we connected when he's looking out. Okay, you didn't put Gary Topp on the list here. Oh, but was he one of your... Yeah, many? Yeah, Gary Top was over here for a pretty big deep time. Hey, I'll just shout out this man because he's 109 years old. and he's still going to live music as often as he can. But Richard Flo Hill. Yeah.

He was on my early honorary patrons board and has been a big supporter and a lovely guy and he's a neighbor of mine. So we see each other from time to the time. And I go to his birthday parties. And he's an ambassador of Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball. So let's just shout out Cito Gaston. So I was in West Elm one time.

And Cedogaston and his wife were there. And he had just, they had just, he had just laughed. right they did the big thing down at the Rogers Center and and I just I went up to him and I just said I just want to thank you for all the great stuff you did for this city and I just everybody we just love you so much and what struck me was I mean he was towering he was so kind he was so gracious his wife was so lovely and his skin was perfect and that brings us to the end of our 1,898th show. Go to Toronto Mike.com for all your Toronto Mike needs.

Pick up an Elmo ticket or two for May 21. And much love to all who made this possible. Again, that's Great Lakes Brewery.

Joey, you got your beer. Palma pasta. I got a lasagna upstairs for you. Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball. You got your

history book. Nick Iienes, Recycle My Electronics. orgia. And Ridley Funeral Home. You got your measuring tape. See you all.

Gosh, I'm not ready. I can't believe it. We're almost out of song. I have to tell you who's coming up. Next.

This is important. Who's next on Toronto Mike? Load in here. What's going on? All right, my next guest, oh, my God. Don Pyle. Don Pyle is my guest tomorrow.

His return, don't you dare miss it.